News Round Up: Fireworks in Azeroth Today, 5.0.1 PTR Coming Soon

The Midsummer Fire Festival comes to an end very soon, and Azeroth is celebrating with fireworks today! Besides hourly evening firework shows, there are also special festive NPCs in major cities that have set up tables with mugs and kegs--if you /dance with them, they'll give you Celebrate Good Times! and +10% to all stats. Meanwhile, the goblin guards in Booty Bay are all asleep.

Holiday fireworks vendors in capital cities sell a variety of interesting types like Midsummer Ground Flower, as well as exclusive accessories like Red Sparkler which can only be bought today.

by the Alliance flight master in Booty Bay.

in Stormwind's Trade District.

in Orgrimmar's Drag.

in the Ratchet inn.

in Ironforge.

Midsummer Fire Festival Ends with a Bang

Blizzard

There’s a big celebration across Azeroth, and you’re invited!

All who find their way to their faction’s capital cities today can enjoy a fireworks display and toast the end of the Midsummer Fire Festival. Revelers in the city streets are looking for a /dance or /kiss, and rewarding those who reciprocate with a limited-duration buff. Celebrations are taking place in all capital cities as well as in Booty Bay, with fireworks displays commencing at 6:00 p.m. PDT, and continuing hourly until the end of the event.

We hope to see you there!

We also have more information about public testing for patch 5.0.1, the new Steelseries World of Warcraft mouse, and a few more beta class analysis posts from Ghostcrawler under the cut!

5.0.1 PTR Coming Soon

Kaivax

We will soon begin public testing of patch 5.0.1 of World of Warcraft, a patch that will precede the Mists of Pandaria release, and includes many features and functions that are new to the game.

We encourage all players who wish to test patch 5.0.1 with us to take careful note of the following:

It will not be possible to access the 5.0.1 PTR realms with a game account that accesses the Mists of Pandaria Beta.

If a game account has been flagged with a Mists of Pandaria Beta license, it can only be used to enter Beta realms.

This limitation is on each World of Warcraft license, and is not Battle.net account-based.

While testing 5.0.1, players will not be able to access zones or content that is a part of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

Thank you for your continued support of our testing and tuning process. We look forward to seeing you in-game.

World of Warcraft Mouse Gone Wireless

Blizzard

At E3 2012, SteelSeries unveiled the World of Warcraft® Wireless Mouse, co-designed with Blizzard for wire-free maneuverability and style. No cords, no limits – just pure gaming freedom.

The new wireless MMO mouse brings players an ergonomic, 11-button layout, with 16 million colors of illumination and 16 hours of battery life. Each of the buttons is made with a rubberized, soft-touch coating, providing users with a comfortable grip for long raiding nights and tense arena sessions. The technology for the new mouse includes pro-grade switches, and 3200DPI laser. For extended gaming sessions (or for when you forget to charge it) the mouse can also be wired, and the battery will charge while it’s connected and in use.

The SteelSeries Engine software guides players through an easy, in-game integration set-up with drag and drop functionality of World of Warcraft commands, full button remapping, macro creation and the ability to save an unlimited number of game profiles.

Attunements

Draztal

Although we might look at them with rose-tinted glasses these days, some players back in the days complained that these attunements were too long. Guilds would also complain, eventually, as they had to pick up new recruits and basically run them through "old content" in order to get them up to speed (memory might be playing tricks on me, but I remember this happening when Tier 6 was live).

For those that miss them for the lore they brought, be sure to check the Lorewalker faction in Mists of Pandaria :-)For some players it might've been an amazing way to tell the lore (for me it certainly was); but for some others it was just getting in their way, preventing them from entering into raids. It's not as simple as arguing that those players didn't want to put the effort. In some cases, that content was just not attractive to them, in the same way than for a more PVP-minded player, PVE content is not as appealing as playing, for instante, a Ratted Battleground if given the choice.

Sure, the old attunements were bad, are you claiming it is only possible to do long boring ones? They can be updated for 2012 without being the same as vanilla TBC, attunements should introduce players to playing their class well to progress this journey of character progression is much more engaging and enjoyable than the current 'see the content' journey.

There're almost infinite perceptions of what's considered "playing a class well". What might be acceptable for you as an individual, might not be even close to what should be acceptable for another player, or might be even way too much for a completely different player.

If you ask what's playing a class well to a hardcore PVP player, a Hardcore raider, a casual PVP player, a casual raider... you'll get different answers from all of them.

Transmoggable Legendaries

Takralus

Just from this thread, you can see the range of arguments on this topic, and the various pros and cons that transmogrifying legendary items would present.

Our current way of thinking is still that legendaries are and probably should remain to be rarely seen. When you do see one, you instantly recognise it for what it is, and acknowledge the prestige that goes along with owning one.

But please carry on discussing the topic, we're really interested to see some good discussion either way.

Call to Arms: Engineers Wanted

Blizzard

Everything we do at Blizzard revolves around games. We dream them up, build them, and support them so that they’re enjoyable and available all over the world. As gamers, we feel lucky to spend our days creating the kinds of games that we love to play.

Talented engineers make everything that we do possible. They forge new paths for our company on a daily basis, from Blizzard apps on mobile devices to the server infrastructure that allows us to offer global gaming experiences, and everything in between. We wouldn’t be Blizzard without talented engineers -- and now we’re hiring more.

If you’re an engineer who wants to work with a passionate, creative team on some of the most critically acclaimed game universes in entertainment -- Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo -- and help us take our games even further, we want to hear from you.

We think you’ll like it here.

Are you a Java Server Engineer?

Our websites aren’t just lists of product information, they’re the gateways to our worlds. We integrate our sites with many of the most important parts of our games: databases of thousands of items in the World of Warcraft Armory and Diablo III Game Guide; in-game event calendars; region-wide profiles featuring talents, equipment, and achievements; and competitive leaderboards. You’ll use your talent for Java to support the Battle.net infrastructure through major game launches, help maintain the high-traffic servers that host World of Warcraft accounts and Blizzard e-commerce around the globe, and shape some of the most popular web destinations in the world -- Alexa™ top-ranked sites like Blizzard.com and Battle.net that attract millions of passionate players every week.

We built Battle.net to bridge gaps -- not just between our games, but between Blizzard gamers as well. That’s why we’ve focused on the features we want as players: cross-game chat for StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, and Diablo III, shared in-game achievements, dynamic friends’ lists, and more. As part of the Battle.net team, you’ll develop and iterate on elements like these, writing and optimizing C++ code that powers each major Blizzard title, coordinating with teams throughout the company, and pioneering services used by millions of players the world over. Anyone who wants to enjoy a Blizzard game with friends new or old will be able to do so quicker and easier . . . thanks to you.

As you might suspect, we have some ambitious projects in the planning stages, and we need talented, passionate engineers to help bring them into reality. If that sounds like your kind of challenge, tell us what you’re doing (or what you’d like to do) and join us.

-Blizzard Entertainment

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Ghostcrawler

I read these two comments where one says that R Shaman have a niche (stacked up healing), and the other comment that no healers should have a niche. I'm bringing this up specifically regarding 10 man spread raid healing, 25 man spread healing for Shaman is not really an issue. There were plenty of fights outside of Dragonsoul that were absolutely painful to heal through as a Shaman, and nothing has been done to help us spread heal AoE raid damage that is coming out regularly. It seems to me that class balance is significantly lacking with regards to 10 man spread healing.Thanks again for the feedback you've been dishing out :)

My first comment was that we don't want healer specs to be "I'm the tank healer guy" vs. "I'm the AE healer guy." These days nobody freaks out if you ask the paladin to heal the raid or ask the shaman to heal the tank, which we think is good. My second comment was that it's fine for the different healers to have different strengths and weaknesses and mechanics. We think Resto shaman fall squarely into the second category.

Currently I believe, say, an orc dual wielding an axe and a different weapon will have 1% more expertise attributed to the swings of the axe but not to those of the other weapon, from the axe specialization racial. (If this is not how it works, please correct me.) Will pets inherit (50% of) this expertise at all? If so, is it decided by whether the owner is wielding an axe in the main hand, or in either hand, or what?

Also, what about the Draenei racial, Heroic Presence? I believe we've tested this and found it not to affect pets - can we assume this will be fixed?

The draenei racial should transfer to the pet. The expertise racials should use the higher value of MH or OH.

In doing the raid testing over the past few weeks Disc priest feels like it is slacking behind the other healers. To me it is feeling rather weak in its healing to mana cost ratio. Also aoe healing for Disc seems to be quite lackluster. PoH throughput to mana cost just seems out of proportion. It was nice to get Power Word: Solace but at the same time to get the mana back you have to be not healing which seems rather counter intuitive as a healer in a raid. The other talents in the tree Mindbender and Surge of Light just don't seem to restore the mana that Power Word: Solace gives back as long as the downtime to cast it is there.

The question I am asking you is, do you feel that Disc is at a point where it is balanced compared to the single target and aoe healing that the other healing classes can throw out when considering throughput and mana cost as well as mana regen downtime?

Dungeon and raid tests are ongoing, but we haven't seen any real weaknesses in Disc compared to the other healers thus far. The level 45 tier is intended to provide different ways of getting back mana or being mana efficient. Solace may seem more desirable on fights where you have long periods of not healing, but those fights probably can't stress your mana that much anyway.

In that case, let me rephrase a question we've already been asking amongst ourselves for some time now: How do YOU see us using Soul Reaper in a sub-35% situation?

For every theorycrafted result we've simmed/tested so far, we've estimated that its gain is so strong that sitting on a Death Rune just to match with the cooldown is more than worth it. Not using it off cooldown is a loss. Thus, it dominates our rotation completely and frankly makes for rather unenjoyable gameplay, given how antithetical holding back runes feels.

As such, we're also getting numbers higher than your stated 7% for Unholy and 4% for Frost- far higher. This is one of the primary reasons why we're so slanted towards generating and maintaining Death Runes as constantly as possible, and thus why we say talents like Blood Tap and Plague Leech being mandatory.

Is there something radically different we're doing than from what your internal numbers show you?

Give us some time to take another look at Soul Reaper. We certainly hear the concern, and I don't want to dismiss it, but without doing some research, I wouldn't be able to add anything new to the conversation.

Actually, sitting on runes for 6 sec to fuel Soul Reaper during an execute phase isn't a problem. It's an execute, and it should dominate the execute phase. A warrior would do the same thing with rage and Execute itself. I was more referring to the concern about whether Blood Tap and Plague Leech are mandatory because more Death Runes during execute are so important.

Another thing I noticed was the first tier talent Double Time. Reading it, I was under the impression that I could charge someone, they immediately use an escape (blink/disengage etc), then I can immediately charge again, and after the second charge the cooldown is incurred. However, at this point in time I charge something, and it is not available for use for another 10-12 seconds as it 'recharges'. This goes against what the talent reads "You can use charge twice before incurring it's cooldown". Is this intended?

Charge with Double Time should work almost exactly like monk Roll. Imagine you have Charge A and Charge B. Each has a 20 sec cooldown and you can use Charge B exactly 1 sec after you use Charge A. If you use them back to back, then Charge A comes off cooldown in 20 sec and Charge B comes off cooldown in 21 sec.

Is there a reason why Healing tide doesn't scale with mastery and is there a reason why healing stream doesn't scale with haste or crit ?

IT just seem's strange that Healing tide works with haste and crit but not mastery and healing stream works with mastery but not haste and crit .Looking for any insight

Those are both bugs.

For the sake of clarification, does this mean you would examine the functionality of Blood Tap and Plague Leech? Or re-examine abilities which cost a Death Rune cost?

The last time we ran a test, choosing Blood Tap was within 1% DPS of Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption (and was actually the lowest). Since your sims suggest otherwise, we'll have to figure out the source of the discrepancy. It could be the sims have bad numbers somewhere or it could be you are using a different (more optimized?) rotation than we are. Actual dungeon and raid parses will help, since most players care a lot more about those than theoreticals.

Is it really meaningful to compare Rage to Runes? Because they aren't the same...at all.

Classes are designed to be different from each other, true. The assertion was that it was bad to sit on resources to wait for a big attack. We don't think that is a problem.

Current: Raid/Dungeon: DPS cooldown, sometimes used in emergencies to prevent wipes since they can take 2-3 hits each (6-9 swings)

Maybe in a dungeon. In raids, Mirror Images take about 1 boss hit to die even in Cataclysm. The fact that you have 3 will buy you a little time, which should be about the same in Mists.I'm not following you. Are you saying the DPS difference is minuscule but you'll take Blood Tap anyway?

I'll repeat: for our testing, you can pick any of the level 75 talents and do almost the same DPS. Now perhaps using Blood Tap makes the rotation easier since you know when you're getting a Death Rune, but I don't think that's what a lot of DKs are arguing. They are arguing, unless I am mistaken, that Blood Tap is mandatory because it's a DPS increase. I need to understand why there is such a disconnect.

We haven't changed our design intent. A recent change to mastery for warlocks made the glyph more powerful than intended.

If you want to get together with friends and try out warlock tanks in dungeons, knock yourself out. We have no plans to support warlocks tanking raid bosses and we don't want to see warlocks in Dungeon or Raid Finder trying to talk the designated tank into letting the warlock tank. As I said before, a glyph is not the appropriate way to let a class choose a tanking role.

I wanted to clarify that the current damage reduction is a bug, but please let's not derail this numbers-focused thread into a discussion of warlock tanking.

If you recall, early on in this thread, I talked about how we sometimes gloss over certain mechanics in tooltips, for the same of simplicity and understandability. This is one of those cases. A single shard is a really significant chunk of resource, so it can’t be a very high proc rate. But with a low proc rate, it’s very random, meaning that you regularly get fights where you get relatively few shards, and some where you get a ton of shards. We wanted it to still be somewhat random, so we went with a somewhat complex system under the hood that creates "smoothed" randomness, with a simple sounding cover on it (the tooltip). We didn’t expect players to really notice at all, so huge kudos to you; what you describe is almost exactly how it works. It’s actually a stacking 2% chance per Corruption tick, which averages out to an 11.7% proc chance. It does indeed count all spell=172] ticks from all sources. I believe in your current build, it only is giving 1% on the first tick instead of 2%, but that’ll be fixed in the next build.

We don't think every proc needs this kind of treatment. Nightfall is kind of a big deal, so excessive RNG could cause balance or rotational problems.Fixed for the next build; Blood Worms will get the same pet scaling as other pets, including Hit/Exp.

* How much AP/SP do Feral Spirits, Fire Elementals and Earth Elementals get from the owner?* What is the coefficient on a Shadowfiend's/Mindbender's attack?

I’d rather not get into listing every specific coefficient, because it's a short slippery slope from there to us just publishing every number for every spell. These are unusual, so we can understand why they might be tough to figure out.

Most pets have base DPS that is based on your class and level, and then get some % of your SP or AP as their AP, and get the standard AP/14 DPS increase to their weapon damage from that. The Earth Elemental is one of these traditional pets, getting 100% of your SP as AP (or 150% for the Primal Earth Elemental). However, the Fire Elemental and Shadowfiend/Mindbender are unusual. Their auto attacks deal magical damage, which means they also benefit from SP, as well as AP. I believe in the current build you have, they’re getting both AP and SP from you, which is complicating things further. We just simplified that, so in a future build, they will just get 50% SP from you. Try them out in a couple builds.

Again, these are just to give you some examples and point you in the right direction. Teach a man to fish, etc.

Currently they don't appear to scale with temporary percentage-wise haste buffs on the owner, such as Dark Soul: Misery. Is this intended, or will that change over the next few builds? Whatever the answer, is the same true for temporary crit buffs?

Yes, these will be fixed in upcoming builds. We’re trying to get rid of all of the "snapshotting" of stats on summoning. Let us know if you think we missed any; it will take a couple builds for you to get all of the changes, but all temporary buffs should dynamically update to the pets.

On a related note, we've been told before that pets should not benefit from any buffs on their own anymore, but in Cataclysm they still gained certain things like Bloodlust/Heroism. Will this still be true in MoP? If so, do you have a comprehensive list of which buffs can affect pets?

Pets should not be able to double dip on any of these buffs. Any that still do apply to pets will be fixed. We fixed it recently for Bloodlust, for example.

I hope you like enhancement, GC, because I have 45 more parses for you to sift through

I hope *you* like Enhancement, since it looks like you did over 8 hours of parses there! Thanks. Regarding your results, they line up pretty nicely with what we have, within expected error. Our recent buff to all ratings effectively also buffed Elemental Blast, which we’ve since adjusted for (from 3500 down to 3000).

My newest source of confusion is Archimonde's Darkness, the behavior of this spell when you don't use it's active ability at all is very inconsistent when tanking and I don't think it's worth testing it's active behavior until I understand it's current and intended mechanics. From what I can tell the ability is only "reflecting" boss special attacks and not "white" hits.

This is a known issue and is fixed for a future build. It should reflect white attacks but doesn’t in your current build.

What about dual-wielding pets like the Wrathguard and the Shivarra? Does the fact that their models display them as having weapons in both hands mean the game actually treats them as dual-wielders, meaning they will miss even if their master is spell hit capped?

Wrathguards and Shivarra are indeed actually dual wielding, with the benefits and detriments associated with that, and are balanced with that in mind. I believe there are a few bugs with that in your current build, but will be fixed. They should miss 19% more on white attacks, and deal 50% weapon damage with their offhand attacks. They will be hitcapped for specials if you are.

Will Echo of the Elements be able to proc from Elemental's mastery? I would assume not, but the wording on the talent doesn't make it clear one way or the other.

Also, does the effect have any type of internal cool down?

Yes, Overloads can be Echoed. Echo of the Elements only has a very short ICD to prevent it from triggering from multiple hits of the same spellcast.

Comments

Comment by Voltt

Our current way of thinking is still that legendaries are and probably should remain to be rarely seen

Okay, okay, stop right there. That is the biggest load of crap I've heard lately from a blue post.

Is giving everyone and their grandmother Tarecgosa and the Fangs your way of things being rarely seen?

No, things being rarely seen were the War Glaives, where you'd see one or two people with them. They are legendaries, they should be always sought after, but very rarely obtained. They are supposed to, and used to be, something people dreamed of getting, but didn't. They should be super, super rare items, not something you can do a few quests and farm items in a raid for.

I mean, hell, even Shadowmourne was still pretty good as not too many people had them.

But seriously, you see someone with Tarecgosa, it's like okay wow good job, join the club.

That blue post quote is such !@#$. I haven't been so frustrated by a blue post in awhile.

As for the MoP legendary, I don't care that any class can use it, I think that's cool and doesn't lock any class out, but if every other raider has one, that's a problem and it seriously devalues the legendary. What's next, welfare legendaries?

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-07-04T15:19:59-05:00

You know, I disagree with that; lots of people are picking up Legendaries now, since the content is 'easier' to get them. Who cares if others have them, doesn't devalue your own.

I agree that they shouldn't be transmoggable, just because it would be a massive pain in the tucus to get all the things coded right. Beyond that; meh, MEH I say.

Comment by FuzzyFuzz9

on 2012-07-04T17:03:19-05:00

/Sigh another Midsummer goes by and no Frigid Frostling ... ooh well better luck next year

Comment by Interest

on 2012-07-04T20:34:18-05:00

Aw really? I can't go to PTR?

Darn.

/Sigh another Midsummer goes by and no Frigid Frostling ... ooh well better luck next year

I got like 3....(duplicates D:)

Comment by Azrile

on 2012-07-04T21:00:52-05:00

/Sigh another Midsummer goes by and no Frigid Frostling ... ooh well better luck next year

Sorry to hear that. I ran 4 tanks through it every day for this event.. Finally, a few days ago I was doing some AH shopping on my mage and decided to queue for it (22 mins) while I was browsing.. sure enough..40+ runs through it tanking got nothing, but my first run as a dps and I finally got it. Thankfull with the change to pets, it will be on my main´s character soon.

Comment by AngelicMew

on 2012-07-05T01:12:23-05:00

I agree that legendaries should not be moggable because like it's been said, if you see it too often then it looses it's "Legendary" factor. I've been farming for Thunderfury the past 8 months and will certainly hate it too see it everywhere after I've finally got mine.Another example is that the server I play on it's gotten to a point where we probably see Dragonwrath every week or two. In the beginning dragons filled the sky when one obtained the staff... now your lucky to get a "Good job" in general chat...

Comment by thaedris20

on 2012-07-05T01:18:04-05:00

Its a bummer i dont access to the PTR but its understandable. Just curious though will the press have access? I would love to at least know what is going to be on the PTR different from the Beta.

Comment by alinoor

on 2012-07-05T01:34:37-05:00

So the PTR is coming soon.....anyone know when that is? lol

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-07-05T02:53:14-05:00

Its a bummer i dont access to the PTR but its understandable. Just curious though will the press have access? I would love to at least know what is going to be on the PTR different from the Beta.

If you have another account that doesn't have a Beta Pass, you can go and check out the PTR...but all it is going to be the new talents and the like, same as it was for pre-Wrath and Cata.

So the PTR is coming soon.....anyone know when that is? lol

Soon.

Comment by Interest

on 2012-07-05T03:34:24-05:00

Oh cmon. Use "eventually." Soon is so old ;3

1

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